Time Out: Primer

Hello, friends in time, and welcome to a regular feature on Cinema 52 where I put my weekly viewing of Back to the Future on hold and watch another movie featuring time travel for comparison. It may not keep me sane, but it will probably always involve one guy shouting, “This doesn’t make any sense!” And that’s good enough for me.

PRIMER (2004)

Primer is about…

(In order not to interact with my own knowledge of the film, I’ve decided to avoid the duplicate of me that has already looked up the plot synopsis on Wikipedia.)

THE STORY:

THE ACTING:

THE SPECIAL EFFECTS:

OTHER STUFF:

This movie was supposedly made on just $7000, and most of it went to film stock. I assume the rest was brought back in time and spent on lottery tickets.

THE “NONE OF THIS MAKES ANY SENSE!” MOMENT:A good portion of the film’s dialogue falls under this category. The two leads, Aaron (Shane Carruth) and Abe (David Sullivan), are always discussing whether or not various time travel scenarios are possible. Half of them are plot spoilers and the other half are just too enjoyable to give away, so here’s something they talk about while gassing up.

“Look, Abe, look, I’m not going to pretend like I know anything, okay, about paradoxes, you know, or what follows them. And, honestly, I really don’t believe in any of that crap anyways. I mean, kill your mom before you’re born, whatever. It must work itself out, somehow.”

FINAL THOUGHTS:You really need to see Primer. You really do. No, I don’t completely understand it. A day after watching it, some of it is clicking in my brain. I think. When it ended, I wanted to watch it again. This would be a movie to watch 52 times. I could nit-pick on certain parts that seem to be plot conveniences or the result of having practically no budget, but these things don’t matter. It’s intriguing, it’s surprising, the two leads are believable and engaging as both engineers and friends, and it’s only 77 minutes. You should be watching it right now.

WAIT, WHAT IF I’M THE ONE EDITING WIKIPEDIA?Still don’t get it. I feel like I should watch Primer for next week’s article as well. No, I can’t, this would create interference with the Back to the Future cycle. I’m triggering the Primer failsafe.

About Cinemanaut Bill

Bill Gray grew up in Milton, NH, intensely analyzing and memorizing every single movie his parents would let him watch (so, Disney). Upon escape, he attended the University of Maine at Farmington as a writing major. Somehow, he ended up in Portland, ME as a paid video editor and an unpaid comedian. He currently lives with fellow Cinemanaut Becca, his girlfriend of 9 years, and they will be constantly fighting for Blu-Ray player use. He is so very done watching Top Gun, which he watched once every week of 2012. He loves BACK TO THE FUTURE.

Comments

http://www.facebook.com/philip.hobby.7 Philip Hobby

I’ve worn ties in my home. To anyone that knows me I am sure this comes as no surprise.

http://www.facebook.com/philip.hobby.7 Philip Hobby

Seriously though, SPOILERS!, is this movie about immutable or mutable timelines, or do they not even know? On the one hand they see their past selves enter the storage facility to go in; on the other, they have failsafe machines that reset things and then we, the viewers see a completely alternate timeline. Or was all that other stuff we’d already seen going on? Because we see a different Abe talk to an Aaron on the bench, and Aaron’s little cassette tape of the conversation breaks down pretty quickly.
Yeah, I’d love to see you watch this 52 times; I’d be there for at least 26 of them.